maturity

Most people believe the journey they begin with Christ goes forward, but that is not how he works. A spiritual life is not cutting ties with people, in order to walk clean in the future. The journey home isn't running away from obstacles. It is learning to stand where you are now and handle people, assert yourself, set boundaries and never feel your happiness is dependent on another person's approval of your choices, beliefs or spiritual needs.

Age brings maturity, experience ripens it.

Like the culture that created me, I am receding into the past at a rate of knots. Soon I'll need a whole row of footnotes if anybody under thirty-five is going to comprehend the least thing I say.

You look extremely young," said Miss Nightingale...."Age isn't really a matter of years, I find," returned Phemie. "I know people twice my age who will never be as old as I am now.

Chronologically she is twelve but emotionally she is older, and intellectually older still.

Maturity turns out to be a question you can never answer with confidence, despite advanced age and wage.

He had the beginning of wrinkles and the easy manner of one who has already made his mistakes.

Childhood and adulthood were not factors of age but states of mind.

At thirty a man suspects himself a fool;Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;At fifty chides his infamous delay,Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;In all the magnanimity of thoughtResolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.

I tried desperately to put my thoughts into the forms of prayers, but I didn't know how. If God was real, I figured He was powerful enough to know what I wanted without me actually saying the right words.

The evangelical wing of the Church spends a lot of energy on being "born again" but little time on "growing up" again. There is a failing to encourage newborn believers out of the maternity ward and into a big world where they will spend the rest of their spiritual lives trying to find what they are looking for.

There are no shortcuts to maturity in discipleship; it was, is, and always will be learned over time and under pressure walking in union with Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]

It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good.

You know your Bible too well and life too little.

Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.

I want every one of our members to grow into maturity more quickly than they seem to, but the Lord has taught me to shepherd people, call them to repentance and let Matthew 18:12­_14 play out.

Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God__ will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God.

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people__.